Fighting For The Angels

"If my understanding of predestination is not correct, then my sin is compounded, since I would be slandering the saints who by opposing my view are fighting for the angels." (RC Sproul, Chosen by God, pg. 14)

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John Wesley

"Answer all [the Calvinists'] objections, as occasion offers, both in public and private. But take care to do this with all possible sweetness both of look and of accent...Make it a matter of constant and earnest prayer, that God would stop the plague."

God’s Sovereignty

"God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so." A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God

James Arminius

"Besides, even true and living faith in Christ precedes regeneration strictly taken, and consisting of the mortification or death of the old man, and the vivification of the new man...For Christ becomes ours by faith, and we are engrafted into Christ, are made members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones, and, being thus planted with him, we coalesce or are united together, that we may draw from him the vivifying power of the Holy Spirit, by which power the old man is mortified and we rise again into a new life." [Works Vol.2 pg. 233, Wesleyan Heritage Collection].

“Whether there is any foreknowledge or not, it is certain that there will be one particular course of future events and no other. On the most absolute doctrine of freedom there will be, as we shall soon more fully illustrate, there is one train of choices freely put forth and no other. If by the absolute perfection of God’s omniscience that one train of free events, put forth with full power otherwise, is embraced in his foreknowledge, it follows that God foreknows the free act, and that the foreknowledge and the freedom are compatible. The difficulty does not indeed lie in the compatibility of the two. The real difficulty (which we distinctly confess to leave forever insoluble) as may soon more clearly appear, is to conceive how God came by that foreknowledge. But that is no greater difficulty than to conceive how God came by his omnipotence or self-existence. It will be a wise theologian who will tells us how God came by his attributes. It will require a deep thinker to tell how the universe or its immensity came about by its real or actual deity; or how the present self-existent came to be, and no other.” (The Freedom of the Will: A Wesleyan Response to Jonathan Edwards, pg. 229)

For the context of this quote, you can read Whedon’s entire book free online. The section dealing with the compatibility of free will and foreknowledge can be found on pages 267-293. The above quote was taken from a recent edited version which is why the page # is different.

I am afraid you have misunderstood Whedon’s point. He is saying that no matter how free we are, we will still make choices, choices that will eventually happen. Just as surely as there will be a future, there will be choices made in that future and that shape that future. That truth does not take away freedom at all. So he is not saying that these choices “must” happen (necessity/fate), only that they “will” happen (certainty, but not necessity). That is why Whedon is careful to say “it is certain…” rather than “it is necessary…” For more on that very important distinction, see the Picirilli article linked under the quote.

Whedon is here specifically dealing with the objection that foreknowledge is not compatible with free will, in that foreknowledge essentially makes free will impossible. In other words, he is addressing the philosophical claim that if God knows what you will choose, that means you have no freedom. Whedon rejects this and deals with it in various ways. But here, he is basically making a thought experiment. Imagine that there is free will and no foreknowledge. Even without foreknowledge, it is still true that free will creatures will make choices in the future and those choices will be what they will be (not because they must be, but simply because they will be).

So what happens when we add foreknowledge (someone knowing what those future choices will be)? Well, nothing so far as the nature of those choices. They can still be totally free even if they are foreknown. Adding foreknowledge does not change the nature of the choice being free just because those future free choices are foreknown. Foreknowledge is just knowledge. It is not causative. It cannot turn free into not free, or “will be” into “must be”.

Certainty is as much of a problem as necessity. Tomorrow for lunch I may or may not eat a peanut butter sandwich. There is nothing certain about it until I actually decide to eat or not eat the sandwich. If today it is certain that tomorrow I will eat said sandwich then tomorrow I have no choice but to eat the sandwich. It then seems to me that if certainty precedes a decision then it in essence renders the decision nessesary and not free. So while it may be certain that I will make decisions the results of those decisions are not certain until made.

Tomorrow for lunch I may or may not eat a peanut butter sandwich. There is nothing certain about it until I actually decide to eat or not eat the sandwich. If today it is certain that tomorrow I will eat said sandwich then tomorrow I have no choice but to eat the sandwich.

This doesn’t follow. If today it is certain that you will eat a sandwich tomorrow it is only certain because you will in fact eat the sandwich tomorrow. That says nothing about the nature of the choice when it is made, whether it is free or not. You are just conflating certainty with necessity.

It then seems to me that if certainty precedes a decision then it in essence renders the decision nessesary and not free.

It doesn’t seem to me that way at all, since certainty describes only what will be, not what must be.

Did you read the posts I referenced under the quote? Did you read Whedon in context and see how he deals with this claim? Here is another one that you might find helpful: